Accurate Measurements and Precise Modeling of Power Dissipation of CUDA Kernels toward Power Optimized High Performance CPU-GPU Computing

Power dissipation is one of the most imminent limitation factors influencing the development of High Performance Computing (HPC). Toward power-efficient HPC on CPU-GPU hybrid platform, we are investigating software methodologies to achieve optimized power utilization by algorithm design and programming technique. In this paper we discuss power measurements of GPU, propose a method of automatic extraction of power data of CUDA kernels from long measurement sequence, and execute an exactitude and effective power analysis on CUDA kernels. By using the proposed method above, we measured a sample kernel that performs single precision floating point additions on GeForce 8800 GTS. Our results suggest that the power consumption by a non-working thread in underoccupied half-warp is 71% of the power consumed by a working thread.